Mind the gap - between research and practice!
Some reports suggest that teachers don’t engage with educational research, even when projects are put in place specifically to encourage this. In 2016, Paul McLellan gave a talk to the Maths and Science ResearchED conference claiming “There's a gap between the results of academic education research and teaching practitioners”.[i]
McLellan cited a piece of research done in Durham University which sought to evaluate the transfer of evidence-based research to a teaching context. The intervention was based on the research done by John Hattie and Helen Timperley on enhanced feedback[ii], and sought to encourage teachers to use strategies with a proven effect size in their own context. Despite the study being run for a year across nine schools, it surprisingly concluded 'Overall, the data indicates that there is no convincing evidence of a beneficial impact on pupil outcomes from this intervention.'
The Durham researchers speculated that the language in which the research was written was inaccessible for teachers, and that this was one of the main reasons that it did not transfer well into schools.
The TES reported on two studies run by the Education Endowment Fund (EEF) which found similar results. In one study, across five schools in Kent, a senior teacher at one school was designated a "research champion", and worked with senior leaders at the other schools to promote engagement with research evidence. However, the report concluded: "There was no evidence that teachers’ attitudes towards research, or their use of research evidence in teaching practice, changed during the intervention."